Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech. And this is our fourth
Speaker 1: episode about DARPA, And after this episode I will switch
Speaker 1: to some other topics for a while. But DARPA's history
Speaker 1: is incredibly complicated and it's intertwined with some of the
Speaker 1: most important technologies we interact with today, So we will
Speaker 1: revisit this topic in the future. Will come back and
Speaker 1: continue the story of DARPA. But I did not want
Speaker 1: to turn tech stuff into DARPA stuff, So after this one,
Speaker 1: I figure we'll move on to something else and maybe
Speaker 1: in a few weeks we'll pick up where we left
Speaker 1: off today. In our last episode, we covered a lot
Speaker 1: more of the technology that was developed as part of
Speaker 1: the efforts in the Vietnam War, and I guess now
Speaker 1: it's a good time to remind every in the DARPA,
Speaker 1: which back in the sixties was known by its original
Speaker 1: name ARPA, was not an R and D facility itself,
Speaker 1: not truly. It was more of an agency that would
Speaker 1: award contracts to other organizations such as think tanks, universities,
Speaker 1: defense contractors, and stuff like that. ARPA slash DARPA would
Speaker 1: fund the work and they would also set the expectations,
Speaker 1: the guidelines, you know what it was that they were
Speaker 1: hoping to get out of it. But the actual science
Speaker 1: and development was going on throughout the United States and
Speaker 1: all these different facilities, and these projects were frequently top
Speaker 1: top top secret, meaning the people who worked on them
Speaker 1: would keep it quiet even from their co workers. So
Speaker 1: only people at the top of DARPA really tended to
Speaker 1: know all about the bits and pieces, and sometimes even
Speaker 1: the director wasn't fully aware of everything that was going on.
Speaker 1: That's how classified some of these projects were. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, while several ARPA research projects were all tied
Speaker 1: up in the Vietnam War, a group of computer networking
Speaker 1: specialists would initiate the original Arpanet Connections. ARPANETT was the
Speaker 1: R and D project to create a means for different
Speaker 1: computers to send data back and forth between each other,
Speaker 1: even if those computers relied upon different computer languages, and
Speaker 1: even if they were separated by many many miles from
Speaker 1: one another. Part of this required the design and production
Speaker 1: of a brand new technology a router. ARPA had contracted
Speaker 1: the company BBN Technologies to build the first routers back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, and then it took a year.
Speaker 1: But on October twenty, nineteen sixty nine, computers at the
Speaker 1: Stanford Research Institute, at the University of California and Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara and at the University of Utah would connect through
Speaker 1: these routers. The first message sent across this three node
Speaker 1: network was low l O. This was actually Christopher Lines
Speaker 1: attempt to log in l O g I N to
Speaker 1: the s r I computer remotely, but the s r
Speaker 1: I computer crashed in mid message, and so low is
Speaker 1: all we got. Also, how typical is it that the
Speaker 1: server goes down just when you have something important to
Speaker 1: send to it? It dates all the way back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of the ARPA net. But more seriously, this
Speaker 1: connection showed that remote computers would be able to send
Speaker 1: data back and forth using network communication standards and also
Speaker 1: relying upon technologies like packet switching that involves dividing data
Speaker 1: such as the data that represents a file, into smaller packets,
Speaker 1: and each packet has information about where the data is from,
Speaker 1: where it's going, and how it fits into the overall
Speaker 1: collection of information so that you can um when I
Speaker 1: say you, so that a computer can reconstruct the file.
Speaker 1: These ideas we get fleshed out over the next several years.
Speaker 1: An important moment would happen to night teen seventy four
Speaker 1: when vent Surf and Bob con would publish a protocol
Speaker 1: for Packet Network Interconnection, which laid out the principles behind TCP.
Speaker 1: But I've done full episodes about ur PONET, so for
Speaker 1: this episode, we'll just remind you that that was something
Speaker 1: that was happening at this time, and will also point
Speaker 1: out some of the big moments as they tie back
Speaker 1: into our PA. So the main purpose of our Bonette,
Speaker 1: by the way, that was just to create those methodologies
Speaker 1: for computer networks. But one of the applications, perhaps one
Speaker 1: of the benefits that ar Bo was really interested in,
Speaker 1: was the idea that by creating distributed networks of computers,
Speaker 1: the US could maintain some communications and command structures in
Speaker 1: the event of a nuclear strike. So it's kind of scary,
Speaker 1: but it's also really interesting when you think of it
Speaker 1: from a communication standpoint. If you have a concentrated computer center,
Speaker 1: let's say that you've got a known defense computer at
Speaker 1: a university, Well, that is a potential target. If your
Speaker 1: adversary knows that there's a computer at that location and
Speaker 1: they know that it's of critical importance, they may target it.
Speaker 1: And if they take it down, then you lose it,
Speaker 1: and that is another problem for you to have to handle.
Speaker 1: But if you create a means for computers to work
Speaker 1: together across a big network and it spreads all over
Speaker 1: the country, you have distributed your computing power significantly. And
Speaker 1: even if a strike were to take down part of
Speaker 1: that network, because the nature of the network itself, the
Speaker 1: rest of it may continue to operate without the section
Speaker 1: that has been taken out, which means you still have
Speaker 1: some of your communications and control systems in place. So
Speaker 1: it was looked at as a defense measure as well,
Speaker 1: not just a means of having computers be able to
Speaker 1: communicate with one another, but it was an added benefit.
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen sixty nine, are PA and the U.
Speaker 1: S Army with Bell Labs and the Williams Research Corporation
Speaker 1: to develop the w R nineteen turbo fan engine. This
Speaker 1: engine acts as the power plant for many different cruise missiles.
Speaker 1: And I actually had to look this up because I
Speaker 1: was not familiar with the term power plant when it
Speaker 1: comes to things like missiles and jets and airplanes. I
Speaker 1: think a power plant as a place that is used
Speaker 1: to generate electricity. But power plant in this context is
Speaker 1: an apparatus that provides power for device. It's not a
Speaker 1: big surprise. And so the power in this particular scenario
Speaker 1: is the power to fly through the air. So not
Speaker 1: that mysterious and just threw me for a loop the
Speaker 1: first time I saw it, because despite the fact that
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for ten years, that I'm forty
Speaker 1: three years old, I don't think I've ever actually encountered
Speaker 1: that phrasing before. Meanwhile, while this turbo fan is in development,
Speaker 1: while ar Panetta is coming online, ARPO was also funding
Speaker 1: advancements in underwater propulsion systems. So not just this turbo
Speaker 1: fan for going through the air, they were also looking
Speaker 1: at underwater systems. The U. S. Navy had already funded
Speaker 1: work out of the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State
Speaker 1: for a system that was called the Stored Chemical Energy
Speaker 1: Propulsion System or SKEPS s c e p S. This
Speaker 1: was used to power torpedoes. ARPA would fund subsequent research
Speaker 1: to increase the operation duration for those systems to have
Speaker 1: them be long endurance systems in other words, and these
Speaker 1: were systems that were relying upon thermal chemical reactions, so
Speaker 1: you would have them burned through what was essentially fuel.
Speaker 1: So they had to come up with new ways to
Speaker 1: replenish that. The result of this was an improvement over
Speaker 1: the old technology, and it would be incorporated in the
Speaker 1: design of the m K fifty torpedo. In anti war
Speaker 1: sentiment was on the rise in the United States. The
Speaker 1: Vietnam War conflict had been dragging on for were quite
Speaker 1: some time, and the news was just devastating out of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: For one thing, via the Vietnam War was one of
Speaker 1: the first real conflicts where reporters on the ground were
Speaker 1: able to send back footage and real stories of what
Speaker 1: was going on, and it was not These were not
Speaker 1: positive stories. One place where this anti war sentiment really
Speaker 1: became apparent was at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne.
Speaker 1: There an enormous computer, the fastest in the world at
Speaker 1: that time, was the bull's eye of this target. The
Speaker 1: computer was called the ILIAC four I L L I
Speaker 1: A C four. Professor Daniel L. Slotnick who had called
Speaker 1: John von Neumann, a mentor he had studied under. Von
Speaker 1: Neuman was the Arbors scientist in charge of the Iliac
Speaker 1: four project, and his goal was to get the ILIAC
Speaker 1: four up to being able to process a billion instructs
Speaker 1: per second. It was running calculations related to ballistic missiles
Speaker 1: as well as the possibility of using weather modification for
Speaker 1: defense top secret stuff in other words, because it was
Speaker 1: a Department of Defense computer running at this university. And
Speaker 1: in early nineteen seventy a student reporter was able to
Speaker 1: attend a meeting where they talked about how this computer's
Speaker 1: time was being allocated, and in that story that the
Speaker 1: student reporter published, the reporter revealed that one of the
Speaker 1: things the computer was being used to do was related
Speaker 1: to nuclear weapons. Slot Nick was caught between anti war
Speaker 1: protesters and the Department of Defense. He managed to anger
Speaker 1: both sides at the same time when he said he
Speaker 1: took on this project in order to be able to
Speaker 1: build the computer. He wanted to have this computer capable
Speaker 1: of running a billion operations per second, and in order
Speaker 1: to do that he was going to need millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: and the Department of Defense offered that operat tunity. He
Speaker 1: said that if the Red Cross had done the same,
Speaker 1: he would have taken the money from the Red Cross
Speaker 1: and had nothing to do with the Department of Defense.
Speaker 1: This had the benefit of taking off both the anti
Speaker 1: war protesters and the Department of Defense. Nobody was happy
Speaker 1: about this. Tensions continued to grow, and there were more
Speaker 1: than a few violent incidents on and around the University
Speaker 1: of Illinois campus in the months following this news report.
Speaker 1: So in June of that year, the university reported to
Speaker 1: ARPA that the university was no longer going to be
Speaker 1: able to keep this computer safe. The ILIAC four was
Speaker 1: in danger if it stayed on campus, and so ARPA
Speaker 1: chose to move the computer, which by the way, was huge.
Speaker 1: I mean it was several feet long, several feet wide,
Speaker 1: weight an enormous amounts, So moving it was not a
Speaker 1: an easy option. In fact, just to plug in the
Speaker 1: power supply you would have to have a forklift. So
Speaker 1: this was not an easy thing to move. But they
Speaker 1: did relocate it. They moved did all the way out
Speaker 1: to California to NASA's Institute for Advanced Computation at the
Speaker 1: AIMS Research Center. Now, following this, while you have this
Speaker 1: anti war sentiment growing, you have these these violent protests happening.
Speaker 1: Senator Mike Mansfield would introduce a bill that would limit
Speaker 1: ARPA's projects to those that had a quote specific military
Speaker 1: function end quote. ARPA would end up having trouble getting
Speaker 1: budget for speculative or bleeding edge research. They were mostly
Speaker 1: trying to look into ways of pushing the bleeding edge
Speaker 1: of technology out much further than anyone else. In fact,
Speaker 1: the whole goal of ARPA or DARPA as it would
Speaker 1: later be known, was to make certain that the United
Speaker 1: States would never be left behind again, that another spot
Speaker 1: Nick type event would never happen to the US, that
Speaker 1: the US would always be on the forefront of that technology,
Speaker 1: which would mean having to do a lot of exploratory
Speaker 1: research and development that you could not easily tie into
Speaker 1: active military efforts because you're looking ahead to anticipate problems
Speaker 1: that you don't have yet but you think are around
Speaker 1: the corner. So this was a real blow to the agency.
Speaker 1: In addition, the Secretary of Defense would order ARPA to
Speaker 1: be removed from the Pentagon, so the agency's new office
Speaker 1: would be almost three miles away in Arlington, Virginia, and
Speaker 1: that would mean that you would no longer have that
Speaker 1: very quick, immediate access to Pentagon officials. You weren't working
Speaker 1: side by side with them anymore. No one at ARPA,
Speaker 1: not even the director, was really sure if the agency
Speaker 1: was going to be around much longer or not. There
Speaker 1: was a serious worry that the agency might just fizzle
Speaker 1: out without a formal conclusion. But the agency wasn't officially
Speaker 1: shut down, and so it would continue to fund R
Speaker 1: and D work in various projects. I'll explain a little
Speaker 1: bit more in just a second, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. ARFA was also
Speaker 1: funding work to develop low weight mirrors made out of
Speaker 1: beryllium for use, and stuff like infrared telescopes and ballistic
Speaker 1: missile defense systems and weapons guidance systems ended up being
Speaker 1: useful for lots of stuff, especially in space. I mean anytime,
Speaker 1: and I'll mention this again towards the end of this episode,
Speaker 1: anytime you can reduce the amount of weight of the
Speaker 1: components you're sending up into space, you want to do
Speaker 1: it because weight essentially equates money. The heavier your payload
Speaker 1: is to get into space, the more expensive it's going
Speaker 1: to be to get up there. So this was an
Speaker 1: important development not just for these military guidance systems and
Speaker 1: defense systems, but for space faring stuff overall. Are but
Speaker 1: also funded development of technologies that would be incorporated into
Speaker 1: a new generation of detection equipment that could pick up
Speaker 1: Soviet submarine movements. Uh. The project was considered one of
Speaker 1: the agency's biggest successes, with the resulting technology being deployed
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties. So again you see how
Speaker 1: far ahead the agency is from the production of technology.
Speaker 1: You know, it's several years out from where they're doing
Speaker 1: the research and development. They do the r and D
Speaker 1: work in the early seventies, it's not really ready to
Speaker 1: be rolled out in an application until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: But that was again are PA's argument. They said, we
Speaker 1: are necessary to be able to work on these problems
Speaker 1: and anticipate these things so that we're ready to go
Speaker 1: within a decade or so. But if we're not doing that,
Speaker 1: if we're being reactionary instead of proactive, we're going to
Speaker 1: be behind the game. John Lehman, who was Secretary of
Speaker 1: the Navy in nineteen would end up saying that because
Speaker 1: of these submarine sensors, if a war were to ever
Speaker 1: break out between the United States and the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: those sensors would give him the capability to attack all
Speaker 1: Soviet subs that were in deployment within the first five
Speaker 1: minutes of that war. So it was considered to be
Speaker 1: an incredibly successful technology. It's also indicative of a lot
Speaker 1: of DARPA's early work, which focused largely on developing sensor
Speaker 1: technology for all sorts of stuff seismic sensors, acoustic sensors,
Speaker 1: radioactive isotope sensors, etcetera. So there's also no getting around
Speaker 1: the fact that most of the technologies I've talked about
Speaker 1: in these episodes are meant either to defend against or attack,
Speaker 1: or to make attacks more effective. They're all supposed to
Speaker 1: be related to military stuff, after all, But this next
Speaker 1: bit is sort of a relief from that. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies, are PA funded research into what was
Speaker 1: called glassy carbon. This was a foamy sort of stuff
Speaker 1: made from pure carbon, and the foam had some really
Speaker 1: interesting features. It was strong, it didn't weigh very much,
Speaker 1: it was chemically inert, and while the original idea was
Speaker 1: that the stuff might be really important for numerous electrochemical applications.
Speaker 1: One unexpected benefit was that it became a strong candidate
Speaker 1: for material to use in surgical implants like heart valves,
Speaker 1: and so it was. And so this particular ARPA project
Speaker 1: would fund work on a technology that would go on
Speaker 1: to save countless lives, and I think that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's also a good reminder that while some of this
Speaker 1: technology was initially intended specifically for a military purpose or
Speaker 1: to potentially go into military applications, they often would have
Speaker 1: much wider applications than just military ones. In nineteen two,
Speaker 1: are PAS Materials Research Projects developed rare earth permanent magnets
Speaker 1: capable of operating That means is, you know, maintaining their
Speaker 1: magnetism across a range of temperatures that had been identified
Speaker 1: as being military relevant. And it's a pretty big range.
Speaker 1: So on the low end is minus fifty five degrees
Speaker 1: celsius or minus sixty seven fahrenheit. On the hot end
Speaker 1: of the scale, it's a hundred twenty five degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: which is two hundred fifty seven degrees fahrenheit. Now, typically
Speaker 1: heating a magnet will reduce its strength of its magnetic field,
Speaker 1: and cooling a magnet down will increase a permanent magnets
Speaker 1: magnetic field. So why is that Well, from a very
Speaker 1: basic level, a magnet's molecules are largely aligned with one another.
Speaker 1: They're more or less all pointing in the same direction
Speaker 1: within the material. So you've got all these molecules that
Speaker 1: are lined up in parallel, and their north poles are
Speaker 1: all pointing in one direction, their south poles are all
Speaker 1: pointing in the other direction. Heating a magnet up causes
Speaker 1: molecules to move around. Heating stuff up causes molecular movement,
Speaker 1: and the more the molecules move around, the more that
Speaker 1: alignment is compromised. So if you heat up a magnet
Speaker 1: a bit, it starts to lose its magnetic properties. If
Speaker 1: you heat it up enough to a point that's called
Speaker 1: the Curie point, named after Madam Curry, they will no
Speaker 1: longer be magnetic at all. You will have demagnetized your
Speaker 1: magnet by heating it up to this point. It's where
Speaker 1: the molecules will be out of alignment and they will
Speaker 1: not realign. To do that, though, you'd have to heat
Speaker 1: the material a pretty darn hot. The Cury point is
Speaker 1: typically very very very hot for most materials, so for example,
Speaker 1: iron that curi point is like seven seventy degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: It's one thousand, four hundred seventeen degrees fahrenheit. So this
Speaker 1: would mean that it be very rare that you would
Speaker 1: ever encounter those kind of situations. The only way you
Speaker 1: would do it is if you were doing it on purpose. Typically,
Speaker 1: this work was really to make sure that the magnets
Speaker 1: were going to operate according to expectations under hot and
Speaker 1: cold conditions. Also in nineteen two, ARPA officially became DARPA,
Speaker 1: or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and it would
Speaker 1: stick with that name until nine. In three it would
Speaker 1: drop the D and become ARPA again for three years,
Speaker 1: and then in nine will become DARPA again. But I
Speaker 1: figure we're gonna have a while before we get to
Speaker 1: the nineties, so we'll talk about that when we get there.
Speaker 1: Another DARPA funded innovation in the early nineteen seventies was
Speaker 1: the development of gallium arsenide as a semiconductor material. So
Speaker 1: before the semiconductor electronics relied on these really large component
Speaker 1: parts like vacuum tubes, which meant your basic computer would
Speaker 1: take up an enormous amount of space. Several researchers developed
Speaker 1: semiconductor technologies all the way through the nineteen forties, but
Speaker 1: it would take a while for the semiconductor transistor to
Speaker 1: become practical. The properties of gallium arsenide allowed it to
Speaker 1: host faster transistors running on more power than you could
Speaker 1: put on a silicon transistor. Technology would find its way
Speaker 1: into all sorts of applications, though the military was mostly
Speaker 1: concerned with its use on GPS kits and precision guided
Speaker 1: munitions and other defensive systems. One last bit about the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War and DARPA, because we're getting to the point
Speaker 1: where America was getting ready to withdraw from Vietnam. The
Speaker 1: war became increasingly unpopular as it stretched on, and for
Speaker 1: one thing, in the US, it was never really a
Speaker 1: formal war. The US had started out trying to supply
Speaker 1: aid in the form of technology and training to the
Speaker 1: South Vietnamese government and military, and this was all in
Speaker 1: an effort to stop the growth of communism without getting
Speaker 1: directly involved. That was the goal, was to make sure
Speaker 1: that the South Vietnamese forces were capable of handling this
Speaker 1: without the US having to get directly involved. But obviously
Speaker 1: that did not pan out. Every year since nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine had seen an increase in the number of US
Speaker 1: troops sent to the region. In nineteen seventy one, a
Speaker 1: former Rand Corporation analyst named Daniel Ellsberg would leak a
Speaker 1: collection of documents that collectively were called the Pentagon Papers
Speaker 1: to The New York Times. Those documents contained information about
Speaker 1: the US is secret involvement with Vietnam for more than
Speaker 1: a decade. This was actually a detailed report that mc
Speaker 1: namara had asked the Rand Corporation to put together as
Speaker 1: it was going on, sort of an encyclopedia of the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War. And the problem was that at this point
Speaker 1: this analyst leaked the whole thing to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: and it included details on the various ARPA projects that
Speaker 1: had happened in that time, and the involvement of the
Speaker 1: super elitist group of scientists called the Jason's and the
Speaker 1: growing anti war movement was really gaining momentum in the
Speaker 1: United States, and many people were outraged not just about
Speaker 1: the war, but also about these revelations of how the
Speaker 1: US public had been deceived over the years, how the
Speaker 1: government had been purposefully misleading the US population, that is,
Speaker 1: you know, at least supposed to be represented by this government.
Speaker 1: And so it bred this this distrust in the government,
Speaker 1: saying you have been doing all the secret stuff, telling
Speaker 1: us it's one thing when it's really another. The anti
Speaker 1: war sentiment put a lot of pressure on all parties involved.
Speaker 1: Eventually it led to ARPA's director, who was a Dr.
Speaker 1: Steve J. Lucasik, the seventh director of ARPA at that point,
Speaker 1: to sever the ties with the Jason's ARPA was seen
Speaker 1: as the R and D tip on the point of
Speaker 1: the military industrial complex SPEAR, and since the efforts in
Speaker 1: Vietnam didn't prevent the North Vietnamese forces from taking Saigon,
Speaker 1: many were beginning to question the usefulness of such an
Speaker 1: agency in the first place. The experience of Vietnam had
Speaker 1: an enormous effect on the American psyche. The majority of
Speaker 1: Americans felt the war was unethical and a political mistake,
Speaker 1: and that it led to the deaths of thousands of Americans,
Speaker 1: not to mention millions of others. And it taunt Americans
Speaker 1: that the use of force and superior technology would not
Speaker 1: necessarily win out over philosophies and ideology. It wasn't realistic
Speaker 1: to say because we are technologically superior, We're definitely going
Speaker 1: to win. Now, all of this is to say that
Speaker 1: it would make the post Vietnam War era for DARPA
Speaker 1: really challenging. Apart from the name change, which was again
Speaker 1: to indicate that from this point forward, the agency was
Speaker 1: only going to pursue projects that met a specific military need.
Speaker 1: All projects related to the Vietnam War were to stop.
Speaker 1: Project Agile was called an enormous failure, that all the
Speaker 1: attempts to bring research and technology to stop insurgents had
Speaker 1: been ineffective at best and counter productive at worst. Several
Speaker 1: previous ARPA directors who oversaw Project Agile throughout the years
Speaker 1: would admit that their efforts were misguided and ineffective. DARBA
Speaker 1: established a new office called Tactical Technology. This office carried
Speaker 1: out much of the top secret R and D work
Speaker 1: around sensors, improving the technologies that had been part of
Speaker 1: the failed electric fence project, as well as more successful
Speaker 1: projects like VILA and the submarine sensors. And then there
Speaker 1: was the move to research technologies that can mask aircraft
Speaker 1: from radar systems. New advanced air defense missile systems were
Speaker 1: making it increasingly dangerous to fly missions in combat theaters.
Speaker 1: DARPA would tackle this problem by funding research into ways
Speaker 1: that an aircraft might foil radar systems, either by absorbing
Speaker 1: radar waves so that nothing bounces back, or by reflecting
Speaker 1: radar waves off into other directions so that they don't
Speaker 1: return to their radar stations, or both. These projects would
Speaker 1: evolve into have Blue, the first practical stealth combat aircraft.
Speaker 1: This was a proof of concept vehicle the had's first
Speaker 1: test flight in nineteen seventy seven, and there's an interesting
Speaker 1: behind the scenes story that really shows how secretive all
Speaker 1: this stuff was. So the CIA had previously been working
Speaker 1: with Lockheed to develop stealth technology that would culminate with
Speaker 1: an aircraft called the A twelve Ox cart Plane. I
Speaker 1: talked about it in an episode about stealth aircraft. But
Speaker 1: the A twelve was so top secret that even the
Speaker 1: director of DARPA, who was George Hallmeyer at this time,
Speaker 1: he hadn't even heard about it. So when DARPA began
Speaker 1: to look for possible contractors to work on stealth technology,
Speaker 1: they did not initially consider Lockeed. They weren't They didn't
Speaker 1: know that Lockeed had been working on this stuff. They
Speaker 1: originally only reached out to McDonald Douglas and to Northrop.
Speaker 1: When Lockeed executives found out, they petitioned the CIA to
Speaker 1: let them tell DARPA about the stealth technology that the
Speaker 1: Super Secrets Gunkworks division had been doing in order to
Speaker 1: bid on this contract. The CIA would allow Locked to
Speaker 1: tell hal Meyer about the twelve, which later would evolve
Speaker 1: into the SR seventy one reconnaissance aircraft for the Air Force,
Speaker 1: and Lockeed would win this contract. I'll have more to
Speaker 1: say about stealth technology and some of the other tech
Speaker 1: that DARBA worked on towards the end of the seventies
Speaker 1: in just a moment, but first let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. The original design for what
Speaker 1: would become Have Blue would later evolve into the F
Speaker 1: one seventeen stealth fighter. The original design was nicknamed the
Speaker 1: Hopeless Diamond. The sketch was of an aircraft that vaguely
Speaker 1: resembled the Hope Diamond and had lots of facets and
Speaker 1: odd angles. No one was really sure if it would
Speaker 1: be able to fly. The weird angles were part of
Speaker 1: the stealth technology. It was all on effort to redirect
Speaker 1: those incoming radar signals so that they would not return
Speaker 1: to the listing stations. They would bounce off into some
Speaker 1: other directions, kind of like using a mirror to direct
Speaker 1: a ray of light and you just tilt the mirror
Speaker 1: a different direction and the light goes a different way.
Speaker 1: By redirecting the radar signals, it would seem to the
Speaker 1: radar station that there was nothing in that region of
Speaker 1: the sky. That was the whole idea. Much of the
Speaker 1: work on the stealth technology took place on the most
Speaker 1: famous secret base of all time, which of course is
Speaker 1: Area fifty one or the Groom Lake Facility. I've talked
Speaker 1: about this base numerous times in this podcast as well.
Speaker 1: The Air Force would take over the program in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies and conduct flight tests all over the
Speaker 1: Tonopah Test Range, which was seventy miles northwest of Area
Speaker 1: fifty one. Some people would just call that Area fifty two.
Speaker 1: And another big project was in updating the old transit
Speaker 1: navigation system. It was a satellite based navigation system that
Speaker 1: u ARPA had been involved with in the early sixties.
Speaker 1: This effort was to replace that with a more robust
Speaker 1: satellite system. In nineteen seventy three, as America was withdrawing
Speaker 1: from Vietnam, the Pentagon ordered a joint program for a
Speaker 1: single navigation system that all the branches of the military
Speaker 1: would be able to use, because at this point, these
Speaker 1: various military branches had all been working on their own
Speaker 1: systems which were not compatible with one another, and eventually
Speaker 1: um the government said, this doesn't make sense. We should
Speaker 1: have a more unified approach. So this new program was
Speaker 1: called nav Star, and DARPA helped fund the development of
Speaker 1: this program, which by was finally ready for full deployment,
Speaker 1: and it consisted of twenty four satellites with atomic clocks,
Speaker 1: which was necessary for synchronization, and they were launched into
Speaker 1: orbit to give global navigation coverage. This information could be
Speaker 1: used not just to navigate people around the world, but
Speaker 1: also for guided weapons systems. As part of the technology,
Speaker 1: designers included what they called an offset feature. It was
Speaker 1: it was known as selective availability, and it meant that
Speaker 1: if you didn't have the right kind of receiver to
Speaker 1: descramble this information and get a readout, you would actually
Speaker 1: get a result that would be off by several hundred feet,
Speaker 1: which would limit the chances of someone unauthorized making use
Speaker 1: of the system, and it would also keep the GPS
Speaker 1: network impractical for commercial use. That is until President Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton would end the era of selective availability and allow
Speaker 1: civilian systems to access information with essentially the same precision
Speaker 1: as military systems, and at that point GPS receivers were
Speaker 1: accurate enough to be used for things like navigation and cars,
Speaker 1: because before you would be you know, you would have
Speaker 1: like a precision of down two around a few hundred feet.
Speaker 1: That's not very useful when you're trying to look for
Speaker 1: return anyway. During Vietnam, DARPA had funded a few drone
Speaker 1: programs as well. These were very primitive drones compared to
Speaker 1: what we have today, but it was the beginning of
Speaker 1: serious work in unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and for weaponization.
Speaker 1: They were code named Prairie and Collare. Both were remotely
Speaker 1: piloted vehicles or RPVs, and both used lawnmower motors and
Speaker 1: could carry a payload of about twenty eight pounds or
Speaker 1: twelve point seven kilograms. These would serve as prototypes for
Speaker 1: work in the field, which DARPA would end up handing
Speaker 1: over to the Armed Forces in nineteen seventy seven, DARPA
Speaker 1: would fund another project for an unmanned aerial vehicle called
Speaker 1: Amber that was supposed to be a long endurance u
Speaker 1: a V that would get support from the Navy. As
Speaker 1: the project was proving promising, but in the late nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Congress would create a new Joint Program Office to continue
Speaker 1: research and development for unmanned aerial vehicles and DARPA was
Speaker 1: effectively removed from that process. DARPA would move on to
Speaker 1: pursue a new project called Assault Breaker, which had the
Speaker 1: goal of bringing together many different disparate technologies in an
Speaker 1: effort to make them work together in a system of systems.
Speaker 1: This idea of we have all these pieces out there
Speaker 1: and they're all effective, but it would be better if
Speaker 1: we could actually make a cohesive approach to this. So
Speaker 1: the goal was to create a means in which military
Speaker 1: commanders would have an enormous amount of information at their
Speaker 1: disposal and the capability of launching an attack on a target,
Speaker 1: even if that target were well behind enemy lines. This
Speaker 1: would require bringing together all of these different technologies that
Speaker 1: DARPA had played a part in making a reality. Soviet
Speaker 1: Union spies learned about this program, Assault Breaker, and they
Speaker 1: reported back to their superiors in Moscow, and as eventually,
Speaker 1: military personnel in the Soviet Union wrote up a report
Speaker 1: and published it in a journal called Military Thought. It's
Speaker 1: actually a classified journal. Only a few high ranking officials
Speaker 1: really had access to it. Well, high ranking Soviet officials
Speaker 1: and a few U. S. Spies, because, as we know,
Speaker 1: everyone is spying on everyone else all the time, always.
Speaker 1: So when US officials learned that the Soviet government was
Speaker 1: worried that the US was building up a program that
Speaker 1: would give America this incredible advantage in both gathering intelligence
Speaker 1: and acting upon it, spirits started to run high in
Speaker 1: the US because if your enemy is scared, that's good
Speaker 1: news for you. I guess. One cool project that started
Speaker 1: independently from Darba was one that would eventually be called simnet.
Speaker 1: So there was an Air Force pilot named Jack Thorpe
Speaker 1: who was thinking about the possibility of networked flight simulators
Speaker 1: for the purposes of training pilots, you know, combat training
Speaker 1: without actually having to go up in a real jet.
Speaker 1: And he had experienced this on a small scale ld.
Speaker 1: This was not something he just came up with on
Speaker 1: his own. He had already had sort of this experience
Speaker 1: in a system that was at the Flying Training Division
Speaker 1: of Williams Air Force Base, and that system would allow
Speaker 1: two pilots to simulate flying emission together. The simulator was
Speaker 1: complete with hydraulic motion system, so it move you as
Speaker 1: you're piloting the simulated aircraft. But again it was just
Speaker 1: a pair of these simulators that worked together. Thorpe wondered
Speaker 1: if perhaps it would be possible to build out a
Speaker 1: much larger system with multiple UH simulators all connected to
Speaker 1: each other to allow for more complex training. Thorpe wrote
Speaker 1: up a paper titled Future Views Aircrew Training nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: through two thousand. This was in n when he wrote this,
Speaker 1: and he pitched his ideas to top Brass, but they
Speaker 1: didn't take it very seriously. To be fair to them,
Speaker 1: the tech that Thorpe was proposing was incredibly sophisticated for
Speaker 1: the time, and also not many people really knew that
Speaker 1: much about the progress that ARPA net had been making
Speaker 1: in networking different computer systems together, so no one was
Speaker 1: really sure how feasible this was. Thorpe would go on
Speaker 1: doing his career and then he would go to the
Speaker 1: Naval War College to further his education, and after getting
Speaker 1: out of that he was assigned sort of on loan
Speaker 1: by the Air Force to DARPA. While he was at DARPA,
Speaker 1: his boss asked him, hey, gun, any interesting ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: beyond what you're working on. So Thorpe shared his vision
Speaker 1: of these networked simulators, and his boss loved this idea
Speaker 1: and told Thorpe that you should tell this to Larry Lynn,
Speaker 1: who was then the director of DARPA. Larry Lynn liked
Speaker 1: it a lot too, and so yes, Thorpe, how much
Speaker 1: money do you think it would cost to do this project?
Speaker 1: And Thorpe said seventeen million dollars and Lynn said, okay, doky.
Speaker 1: So the program began and it became known as Simulator
Speaker 1: Networking or sim net. DARPA would contract with delt A
Speaker 1: Graphics Incorporated, Perceptronics Incorporated, and bb IN Incorporated to help
Speaker 1: build out the system, and they would subcontract with other
Speaker 1: companies to build all these simulators. And they weren't just
Speaker 1: aircraft simulators. They built tank simulators and other stuff too,
Speaker 1: and they networked them all together. The advantages of these
Speaker 1: simulators over real world training were numerous. Real world combat
Speaker 1: training is obviously very dangerous for some scenarios such as
Speaker 1: let's say you want to operate your aircraft, but you
Speaker 1: also want to jam the sensors on that aircraft. Not
Speaker 1: only is that very dangerous because you're taking away some
Speaker 1: of the information that the pilots are relying upon, it's
Speaker 1: also potentially problematic because depending on where you're flying these
Speaker 1: these training missions, using that jamming technology can affect other
Speaker 1: stuff like commercial flights, or maybe the the airspace of allies,
Speaker 1: or maybe people who aren't your allies. It could be
Speaker 1: really really touchy. But if you simulate it, you can
Speaker 1: do pretty much any scenario that the computer is capable
Speaker 1: of running. So also, because the systems were networked in theory,
Speaker 1: you could have people in different parts of the world
Speaker 1: all training together. You didn't have to get them all
Speaker 1: in the same place at the same time, though, you
Speaker 1: would have to figure out something about lag and latency
Speaker 1: for these systems. Symnet in a way was a precursor
Speaker 1: to online games that millions of gamers play these days,
Speaker 1: like M M O RPGs. They can kind of trace,
Speaker 1: uh what not necessarily trace their history back. But symnet
Speaker 1: was definitely a precursor to that kind of stuff. There
Speaker 1: are many more technologies the DARPA helped fund In the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, there were xemer lasers. These were used in
Speaker 1: communications platforms between aircraft and submerged submarines. They needed to
Speaker 1: develop special lasers in the short wave range of lasers.
Speaker 1: The longer wavelengths didn't have good penetration in the water,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't really use them to communicate with a submarine.
Speaker 1: But there was this need to communicate with submarines because
Speaker 1: at that point, really the only way a submarine could
Speaker 1: communicate with the surface is if the submarine itself surfaced,
Speaker 1: and obviously that puts the submarine in a vulnerable position.
Speaker 1: Being able to use these short wave lasers and have
Speaker 1: them penetrate the water reach the submarine and have the
Speaker 1: submarine be able to respond opened up communication in ways
Speaker 1: that weren't possible before. DARPA also contributed some of the
Speaker 1: components for the Hubble Space Telescope. The agency would design
Speaker 1: and help build two antenna booms for the satellite telescope
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen seventies and early nineties. DARBA pioneered
Speaker 1: the development of a special graphite and aluminum material that
Speaker 1: would allow the booms to not just conduct radio frequencies
Speaker 1: but also double as structural supports. So these structural supports
Speaker 1: that made made the overall telescope lighter. The material was lighter,
Speaker 1: it removes some of the need for some extra infrastructure.
Speaker 1: And again, if you make your payload lighter to send
Speaker 1: off into space, you bring the price down. So weight
Speaker 1: is money, So it was a cost saving feature. It
Speaker 1: took the better part of a decade for DARPA to
Speaker 1: recover in the wake of the Vietnam War. The agency
Speaker 1: changed a lot in the nineteen seventies. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: leave off for now. We're gonna say goodbye to DARPA
Speaker 1: for the time being, but I will come back to
Speaker 1: revisit the agency and the projects that funded over the
Speaker 1: following decades in future episodes. So we'll talk about things
Speaker 1: like star wars and autonomous cars and spying on World
Speaker 1: of Warcraft players and more, because DARPA played a role
Speaker 1: in all of that kind of stuff. It's a fascinating story.
Speaker 1: And again, because of the work that DARPA has helped fund,
Speaker 1: we have access to some pretty incredible technologies that you know,
Speaker 1: rolled out a few years later based on that early work.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely benefited us in many, many ways. The
Speaker 1: agency has also created stuff that's been at best controversial
Speaker 1: and it worst incredibly incredibly harmful, like Agent Orange is
Speaker 1: the one to point to easily as being a truly
Speaker 1: terrible thing. So you take the good, you take the bad,
Speaker 1: you take them both, and there you have DARPA. I
Speaker 1: guess we will revisit this in the future, but in
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you guys have any suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: you would like me to cover on tech Stuff, some
Speaker 1: sort of technology, a company, a person in tech, whatever
Speaker 1: it may be, go to tech Stuff podcast dot com.
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